home alone

You can see the soul of the world in the eyes of these children. When they look out through slits in the walls of empty homes their faces fade back into the shadows, but pools of sunshine gleam from their obsidian pupils. They are sick and scared, but still they wonder about the world. A little boy brushes my hair back from my face and giggles at its softness. A girl holds my hand as we walk along the muddy streets. I don’t know whether she steadies me or I her.

Single mothers support all the families we meet and struggle to keep their children alive. They cannot possibly care for them and look for work. As Debbie tells a focus group, “Women are expected to do so much, but there is only so much that any one woman can do.” Many times, they lock the little ones in dark rooms with no windows. One explains the precautions she takes, “You put out the fire. You hide the matchbooks.” The houses are padlocked from the outside. There are no locks on the inside.

Most of the mothers cannot afford the 35 to 45 cents a day for child care. These women are all alone. There is no one to help them. They don’t discuss their problems; they don’t support each other. “They just do what they’re going to do”-- what they have to do to survive, and hopefully it is enough.

There are several nursery schools , pre-primary programs and day care centers in women’s homes that are run by compassionate and educated people. Handmade signs cover cracks and rusty nails on the walls. These are the only educational tools: one lists numbers using rows of bottle caps, many show pictures stitched in red string, and another, hanging crooked, has letters carefully traced on cardboard scraps. There are no books, no toys, no art supplies—few colors at all in the dark, cobweb covered classrooms.

We find children playing with modeling clay at one school. Each has a piece no larger than a nickel and is forming it into shapes. I thought they were making letters, “E” perhaps. But no, one tells me, “a dog.” There simply isn’t enough clay for the head and tail.

There are no swings and no slides, only dirt, brush and a goat eating garbage nearby. The headmaster explains, “during break they go to the field. It is not very accident free. The children are confined only here.”

Many students go to school not to learn but to eat. The government sponsors a feeding program for primary schools, and the children will at least get a bit of porridge each day. Many get nothing else. But the ECD programs get nothing. Schools rely on parents to pay the 200ksh fees. The tuition-just under $3 per month is used to feed the children and pay the teachers. Many parents cannot afford this. After months without paying and many false promises, the school is forced to send their children home. No one escorts them. The schools have no records of where they live, and it is not safe for teachers to venture into the slum. The children are just sent away. If they return—when they return—having found no one at home to let them in, their older siblings are pulled from classes to join them in the streets.